“We had four or five and they’ve been amazingly big. Our ‘First Saturday’ in July we had 150 people,” said Etherton, whose gallery will host the next event from 6-8 p.m. Sept. 5. “Half of those people had never been to the gallery before, but they heard about this first Saturdays, and there was enough galleries open and enough businesses open where it made sense to come here.”
Terry Etherton has until Dec. 31 to pack up the 3,250-square-foot space that Etherton Gallery has called home since 2021.
Grace Trejo, Arizona Daily Star
Etherton is not the first gallery to leave Convent Avenue. Andrew Smith, who operated his fine arts photography gallery for more than 40 years in Santa Fe before relocating it to Tucson in 2018, closed his gallery at 330 S. Convent Ave. in 2024. He said that after nearly 50 years in the business, he was scaling back to appointments only out of his home.
Etherton said he feels like he’s being forced to leave his gallery on South Convent.
“I’m 75 years old. I knew this day was coming at some point, but I always envisioned it as something that I would decide, ‘OK, let’s do this another year. We’ll take care of all of our artists and we’ll return work that’s consigned. We’ll have a lot of time to do this properly.’ Now we don’t have time to do it properly,” he said. “There’s just a lot of things I haven’t finished yet that I want to finish.”
Terry Etherton poses for a photo inside Etherton Gallery, 340 S. Convent Ave.
Grace Trejo, Arizona Daily Star
Shiff said she appreciates art galleries and artists. “We very much like Terry Etherton,” she said. “He’s been a good tenant. He’s contributed greatly to Barrio Viejo, and I’m glad that, according to his release that I just read last night, apparently he’s able to stay in the neighborhood in another location.”
Her late father, Rollings, who spearheaded the restoration and preservation of Barrio Viejo’s historic adobe architecture starting in 1971, had his own art gallery. For 44 years, Rollings, an avid art collector according to Etherton, operated his America West Primitive and Modern Art Gallery in Tucson and had a location in the barrio.